


Lost Stars

by wozpils



Category: Day6 (Band)
Genre: M/M, slight angst, this wont b sad pramis
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-16
Updated: 2020-04-16
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:14:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23678983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wozpils/pseuds/wozpils
Summary: Two wandering souls - Brian, a young CEO faced with an internal crisis and Wonpil, a young artist with a passion for photography - find their paths intertwined one fateful day in Paris.A short YoungPil fanfic inspired by the Before Trilogy.
Relationships: Kang Younghyun | Young K/Kim Wonpil
Comments: 8
Kudos: 37





	Lost Stars

Brian disembarked from the train, duffel bag in one hand and a paperback in the other. He breathed out slowly and took in his surroundings. He had just arrived in Paris after a four-hour train ride from Geneva. Despite having been on longer ones throughout his trip across Europe, it was a painstakingly long journey for him. The train rides had felt increasingly interminable, each one seeming excruciatingly prolonged than the last. He had begun to notice that his days too felt as if they inched at an obtuse pace.

_Ironic,_ Brian thought. _I wanted to escape my fast-paced life in Seoul so why the hell am I complaining now my days feel longer?_

Paris was the third European city he had departed for ever since he started his vacation, if one could even call it that. To Brian, it wasn’t so much a vacation as it was a desperate escape. His life in Seoul had recently felt suffocating. From the outside, it seemed perfect and ideal – he was at his prime with a high-paying job and a lavish apartment in the heart of the city. His social circle was extensive and he had begun to become quite influential in his field as one of the youngest CEOs in South Korea. He was respected and – to those who aspired to be as distinguished as him – revered. It wasn’t a difficult life; in fact, it wasn’t hard at all. But one night, as he stood alone on his veranda, gazing at the city beyond him, he could not help but feel overwhelmed by an indubitably gnawing sense of loneliness.

It was a crisp autumn night and he had spent it as he had spent all of his weekday evenings after work: alone. Everything felt the same, except that as he looked at the city lights that speckled the horizon like nearby stars, his thoughts accidentally teetered over to the realization that he lived each day routinely and sometimes he could no longer distinguish one day from the next. Even the evenings he spent away from work were spent in the solitude of his apartment with nothing but the company of the night and the occasional cup of tea (and if his body yearned for it, alcohol.) Each one felt the same as the other and every hour passed him by like a blur. Keeping up felt like a chore. Living felt like a chore. It was not that he grew tired or that he felt overworked. He was young and had plenty of energy. He never felt physically exhausted or burnt-out. But he could feel himself pulled down by an invisible anchor that dragged his sense of purpose with it.

He had twenty-seven years behind him and certainly a plenty more ahead but he could not look into even the near future without feeling dread at the possibility that he would lead the same monotonous life for the rest of his days. All of this, he realized, he suffered by himself. It was not because he was alone; he had plenty of friends and many others who wished they were his friends. He was always with people, surrounded by movement but sometimes was at the mercy of the rapid pace at which he lived his life. In the midst of all that movement, he felt disillusioned to find that he had everything in life but the happiness of living it, and as he stood there, with nothing but the buzz of the city lights and the hum of the cicadas, he had nothing but his thoughts to listen to which seemed louder in the silence of the night. _What am I doing? Who has all the means to be happy but chooses to stay miserable in their own loneliness?_ Brian’s breathing hitched ever so slightly. He worked hard for his company because he cared for it but he also needed to keep moving, to keep his mind busy, to feel occupied and surrounded. To not risk confronting a reality that grew indisputable by the minute.

To distract himself from feeling lonely.

He had always heard people say that being alone and feeling lonely were two different things and that night, he finally understood what they meant. Without a moment’s hesitation, he impulsively booked a flight to Milan, texted his assistant that he would be on leave indefinitely and to never contact him about work. He provided no explanation. He didn’t even mention where he was going. Nobody but himself knew. At that time, it wasn’t clear to Brian why he needed to leave, but he knew he could not bear to stay.

It had been three weeks since that night and we return to the moment we already know about. Brian, at the platform in Paris, duffel bag in one hand and a paperback in the other. Because his entire trip had been but a game of impulse and gutfeel, he had no itinerary. He did, however, choose cities that he had previously visited on past excursions and business trips so that he would not feel lost or troubled by having to navigate himself in an unfamiliar city. And it goes without saying that money wasn’t an issue either.

This was his second time in Paris (the first being two years ago, when he had been on a business trip.) Brian walked out of the station and hailed a cab. He had been sitting all morning but his bones felt sore and he wanted to rest for a couple of hours. Thanks to his four years of study in Canada, he spoke a little bit of conversational French. He told the cab driver, in his rusty Canadian French, the name of the hotel he checked into last time he was in the city and under the tender midday sun, they took off.

* * *

“Ah, sh--.” Wonpil kept himself from cursing in Korean. He had blindly lifted his cup of coffee, his eyes fixed on his film camera, and accidentally spilled some on the book he was reading. He hurriedly grabbed a napkin and wiped off droplets of coffee before they seeped into the other pages. A waiter had noticed him fussing over his wet book and approached with more napkins, which he accepted sheepishly.

“ _Merci,_ ” Wonpil said.

“You’re welcome _, monsieur,_ ” the waiter replied with a courteous smile and promptly walked away with the used napkins.

Wonpil took a careful sip of his coffee and continued to browse through his camera’s roll of pictures. He was revisiting his gallery and looking at the pictures he took when he was in Milan (He had been there almost two weeks ago before leaving for Zurich.)

He was fond of taking pictures. In fact, before he left Seoul, he had dabbled in photography and modelling, and what he earned from those ventures continued to finance his current travels. Back then, he didn’t have a clear-cut destination in mind, and such had always been the case. He just knew he wanted to travel and go where his heart told him to, to places his two feet itched to walk on, and more practically, where his cash would allow him to wander. Wonpil had first visited numerous countries in Asia and only a few weeks ago, had decided to travel to Europe. He found himself liking his time in Europe. Apart from the drastic change in scenery, culture, and climate, he particularly enjoyed travelling by train and found it convenient how most of the continent was just one single landmass.

“No oceans to cross” _,_ he once said when his sister asked him why he wanted to go to Europe after having traveled around Asia for nearly two months.

“You’re so unpredictable, Piri,” his sister had told him over the phone last time.

He chuckled lightly. _I’m not unpredictable, fate is,_ he said to himself. “Maybe I am a little unpredictable.”

He scrolled through his pictures: The _Duomo di Milano, Sempione Park, Teatro alla Scala_. Over a hundred photographs, mostly of the landmarks and their wondrous architecture that seemed to exist within their own space and time, becoming even more beautiful with the passage of the years. He had pictures of himself, too, taken by other tourists wandering the cathedral square whom he politely asked, but he scrolled past those. He was more curious about the numerous pictures he had taken of the sites themselves, foregrounded by crowds of tourists. His background in photography, however minimal, meant that Wonpil had an idea of how to take good pictures, and he had a natural eye for composition as well. The pictures he took of tourists flocked around a particular landmark – some taking pictures of their own, others peacefully absorbing the environment as they sat on benches – looked like they could be featured in a travel magazine.

He zoomed in on several photos, taking in all the details, the Romanesque architecture of buildings whose exterior shone a regal palette of brown and beige and white set against the plain blue sky, black lampposts interspersed here and there, the faces of the unknowing tourists his camera had clandestinely captured. He clicked on the zoom button and with his thumb on the arrow keys, navigated through one photograph he took at the _Piazza del Duomo._ It was his last night in Milan then and he had decided to return to the square whose rectangular area was still populated to the edges by congregations of tourists and locals alike. He had situated himself in front of the cathedral and took several photographs of the exterior, a number of people standing in front of the church’s massive anterior. As his eyes scanned the photograph, he found himself wondering who those people were, for how long they had been in Milan and for how long they decided to stay. Were they like him, hopping from one country to another on a spontaneous journey with no attachments nor plans? Where had they come from before arriving?

In his head, Wonpil began to attach stories to these faces, gave them names and places of origin, endowed them with traits and qualities, and idealized a backstory to explain why they were at the square that night. It was a game he liked to play ever since he started travelling and taking pictures. He scrolled through the photograph and landed on a part of the photograph showing a middle-aged man.

_This man, in his fifties, is John. He’s from America and is on a business trip. He has a wife and two kids. He secretly enjoys going on these trips because it gives him a taste of what it feels like to be a bachelor again. And this, woman, presumably in her twenties… I can’t think of a name for her but she’s definitely from a nearby country. Geneva, maybe. She looks like she travelled to Milan on a whim too because she has a youthful look in her eyes._

Wonpil scrolled across the screen once more and landed on a face at the rightmost margin of the photograph. Two eyes staring straight into the lens captured his attention at once. _Hmmm, Asian… could be Korean… Maybe Japanese?,_ he thought to himself. He stared at the man at great length and was immediately mesmerized by the magnetic look in his eyes. _He looks lost. Almost like he’s searching for something_. He looked young, probably around the same age as Wonpil himself. Both of his hands were tucked into the pockets of his coat. Cropped black hair, lips parted slightly. His feline eyes telling a story through a single chance glance. Wonpil felt unusually intrigued by the look in his eyes. He wasn’t just staring blankly into the camera. There was something, an emotion of sort, that seemed to call out to him.

Wonpil’s train of thought was abruptly interrupted by a voice speaking in a familiar language.

“ _Kamsahamnida!_ ” The voice stood out like a sore thumb. Wonpil had been in Europe for almost a month now and it’s been a while since he heard someone speak in Korean. He quickly turned to the direction of the voice. A man from across the street had alighted from a cab, a look of bashful panic on his face having realized he thanked the French cab driver in Korean.

“ _Merci!”_ He quickly corrected himself before pushing the car door shut. The cab sped off and Wonpil could see from his seat at the café across that street that the man, cheeks flushed from embarrassment, was carrying a duffel bag in one hand and a paperback in other, his thumbs pinched between two pages as a makeshift bookmark. The man looked straight across and their eyes met for a split-second, but it was long enough for Wonpil to see his face clearly. He was taken aback and his grip on the camera tightened. _It’s him, the man with the curious look in his eyes. The one at the cathedral square. The man in my photograph!_

The man quickly turned around and entered the hotel entrance, walking with the air that seemed to indicate that this was not his first time in Paris, and in those few seconds that their paths crossed, separated only by a two-lane road, Wonpil felt the spirit of fortuity descend like a dove over them for a fleeting instance, before flying away and leaving a trail of feathers that resembled hopeful possibilities.

Europe was a huge landmass and although it’s quite easy to travel from one country to another (no oceans to cross, as he put it), it was still a funny coincidence to Wonpil how he, now in Paris, had come across the man whose picture he had taken in Milan, whose picture he had looked at in length before a cab came to drop the latter off at the hotel across the street.

He turned his film camera and replaced it in its bag, took one last sip of his coffee, left a generous tip for the patient waiter who helped him clean up, picked up his coffee-stained book, and took off.

He knew where he needed to go.

* * *

“Fuck.” Brian cursed into the air as he looked at the time on his phone. He hadn’t meant to sleep for longer than two hours, but when he checked it was quarter to five o’clock and the late noon soon had begun to sink in the horizon. _What a waste of daylight,_ he thought grudgingly.

He immediately got up from his bed and put on a new set of clothes. His brown coat over a black turtleneck sweater, black denim pants, and black boots. He thought about what to bring. His phone, his wallet, his paperback, what else… not much to bring.

In truth, he didn’t plan on doing much in Paris. He had been to the city before and had done much sight-seeing back then, and Paris was more of a stop-over in his trip around the continent. He had a flight to catch tomorrow, departing for London at six in the morning, but something had told him he should at least wander around the city before he left. Eat, drink, take pictures, buy a new book to read.

Before taking off, he took one last look at himself in the mirror and let out a laugh, struck by how comedic and pitiful his situation was. Here he was, twenty-seven years old, a CEO of a growing company, travelling across Europe for no conceivable reason, or for a reason he had yet decided to think about, motivated only by the nagging need to escape a life he had lost all interest in. Per his instruction, he had not received any calls, texts, or emails about work. No one knew where he was and no one bothered to ask. Three weeks into his trip and whatever sense of clarity he thought he would find once he escaped his life in Seoul was still beyond his grasp. He was still living life day by day, blindly moving from one city to the next in search of something. What that something was, he had yet to figure out. He was on a clueless escape from the loneliness that crept inside him that one night and made itself home in his gut, and yet here he was, feeling none the wiser, none the less lonely.

He shook the thought off his head, grabbed his keycard, and walked out his suite. He thought about where to go as he rode down the elevator – the bookstore nearby and maybe dinner at his favorite restaurant – and walked out into the hotel’s regal high-ceiling lobby. The expanse of the entire space was palatial, its architecture an expertly-thought-out blend of modern and vintage. Marble pillars stood out like glistening white towers equidistant from an impressive crystal chandelier hanging overhead, suspended from a wide sparkling white ceiling that resembled the sky if stars were visible in the morning light. Across the front desk, there was a spacious carpeted waiting area, where several guests were enjoying a conversation or a cup of coffee, some flipping through magazines, others merely scrolling through their phones.

Wonpil was one of them.

He wasn’t a guest at this particular hotel; he was staying in another less impressive one two blocks down. He had been fumbling with his camera, zooming in and zooming out of the picture he took of the Korean man, making sure that this was the same man he saw earlier that day.

It had been two hours since Wonpil arrived at the hotel lobby and he had been patiently waiting. Every time the elevator dinged, he would snap his head in its direction, fervently hoping it was the man in the picture. It was not that he hadn’t thought that what he was doing, waiting for a stranger in his hotel, wasn’t ridiculous or weird for both parties involved. But Wonpil _knew_ he had to. The moment he saw that man’s face, it was as if the sky opened up and a vast expanse of galactic possibilities revealed themselves to him.

The stars had aligned for them in Milan and now they had aligned for them in Paris. The odds of that happening, Wonpil thought, were probably close to none.

And perhaps they were much closer to none than he thought, because Wonpil had been slumped on the waiting area sofa for two hours and the stranger in the picture was still nowhere in sight. He looked at his watch and saw that it was nearing five. He bit his lip and contemplated leaving the hotel, but at the same moment, the elevator had made its familiar ding and opened its doors and Wonpil still turned his head swiftly toward its direction despite his weakening hopes. And sure enough, another fortuity had unfolded for again and his eyes immediately brightened and his body was filled with warmth.

“It’s really him,” Wonpil muttered under his breath, taking one last look at the picture on his film camera, checking for the hundredth time that it was indeed the same person. His eyes followed the man as he approached the front desk, all the while gathering up his things from the coffee table in front of him.

“I’ll be back by midnight. Can I leave the keycard here?” Brian asked the clerk in English.

“Of course, _monsieur._ ”

Brian nodded curtly and pivoted on his heel, his eyes trained on the exit, his gait that of a man who was sure of where he was going, his gaze unmoving. He was blindly fishing his phone from his coat pocket when he was stopped on his tracks by a man who wore a leather jacket over a copper turtleneck and a toothy grin on his face. Brian, confused, stopped on his heel with brows furrowed. He stepped sideways so as to walk around the stranger in front of him, but the latter mirrored his step to Brian’s confusion and annoyance. _What’s up with this guy,_ Brian thought to himself.

“Excuse me,” Brian said in English, taking another sidestep in the opposite direction, but the stranger once again mirrored his footing, still grinning persistently, and Brian who tried his best to keep his displeasure from showing, looked the at the man in front of him questioningly.

“Hi, my name is Wonpil,” the latter introduced himself in Korean, hand outstretched, waiting for Brian to shake it. He hadn’t the slightest inkling how Wonpil knew that he was Korean but even more perplexing was the sudden introduction, without precedent and spoken with such an amiable tone that it was hard to believe it was done without purpose.

“Hi,” Brian said in response. “Is there something I can do for you?”

Wonpil, pulled his hand back after the other responded without shaking it, but the smile on his face never left. “I saw you arriving at the hotel earlier and heard you speaking in Korean. It’s been a while since the last time I heard someone speak our language so you must understand how curious I was to know who it was,” he explained.

“Well,” Brian said as his eyes shifted to the exit. “It was nice meeting you. I hope you enjoy Paris.”

“Wait.” Wonpil rooted himself firmly in front of Brian as he was about to turn toward the door. The former was quite shorter and his effort to block the latter’s way seemed laughable, but he nevertheless planted himself in his spot. “Is this your first time in Paris?” Wonpil asked Brian although he could judge from the way the man carried himself that it was not. From the moment he alighted from the cab, Wonpil knew his sure footing was proof that Brian had walked those steps before. He had an almost Parisian swagger, he looked like he belonged in the city of lights, and Wonpil was sure, after having judged him up close, that he would have judged him the same way in any other city.

Brian let out a sigh, as if to yield to Wonpil’s increasingly obvious persistence. “No, it’s not. And you?”

“It’s my first time. Where’d you come from before arriving?”

“Geneva.”

“I’ve been there,” Wonpil beamed. Brian simply nodded, unsure of where the conversation was headed.

“Do you want to get coffee?” Wonpil asked him in a desperate effort to keep the conversation going.

“I’m sorry I don’t drink coffee. I was just heading out to the bookstore –”

“Perfect, I’ll come with you. Need a new book myself, I spilled coffee on the book I was reading. I hope you understand, it's my first time in the city and it would be nice to have someone show me around.”

Brian was taken aback by the other man’s assertiveness. It unnerved him, if he was being honest. He would much rather take to his business alone, but he sensed that Wonpil, with his cheeky smile and eyes that sparkled with a resolute glimmer, would continue to hound him in the friendliest way and it would be impossible to turn him down.

Brian nodded, less out of wanting to please Wonpil than out of not wanting to come off as rude. “Okay.” Only then did Wonpil clear the way for Brian and placed himself by his side, unable to hide his delight. Together they stepped out of the hotel and into the windy autumn day, the clouds of dusk looming over them and the sun spilling its final rays of light over the horizon.

“Where to?” Wonpil asked cheerfully. Brian pointed the way with two fingers and they began to walk down the sidewalk. “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

He walked with his hands in his pocket. _Because I didn’t plan on getting to know you._ “I’m Brian. Brian Kang.”

Wonpil held out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Brian.” Brian turned sideways and shook his hand briefly and he wondered whether the other man ever felt tired from smiling all the time or if there was ever a time that he ran out of reasons to smile.

“What brings you to Paris?” Brian asked. He was not curious, just polite.

“Hmmm,” Wonpil hummed as he rummaged his brain for a specific reason. There, in fact, was no specific reason. Like Brian, he was just hopping from one city to the next. He traveled with anticipation for the adventure that he knew would come and he did not feel pressured to enter a city with a clear agenda. There was, however, one invisible force that underlined all his travels.

“Fate.” Wonpil answered simply.

“Huh? What do you mean by that?” Brian replied, keeping his eyes forward. They were one block away from the bookstore.

“Just fate. I go where fate takes me.”

Brian scoffed silently at Wonpil’s response, which came off as very idealistic, if not romantic, to him. He had nothing against such notions but he had learned from experience, that there was no room for such thinking in the world, or at least the world in which he lived in.

It did not occur to both of them that when they spoke of fate, they were talking about two very different things. Fate to Wonpil was a separate entity, one which he was not at the mercy of but working in conspiracy with. Fate to Brian was a cowardly person’s excuse for their lack of gumption and direction.

“I see.” Another curt response from Brian. Their walk down the block was accompanied by the sound of the occasional taxi whizzing by. The late afternoon sun kissed the pavement and the storefront windows of the rows of shops and the autumn wind was cool and crisp and Brian could not help but think to himself how much he would have liked to enjoy his sole afternoon in Paris by himself.

“And you? What brings you to Paris?” Wonpil asked as they neared the bookstore which Brian had visited the last time he was in the city. He slowed down in front of the store without answering the question and eyed the humble establishment with a glint in his eyes that Wonpil recognized as a look of relief.

_Shakespeare and Company,_ the sign read in forest green, the same color as the unimposing exterior of the shop. Brian walked in and Wonpil followed suit. The latter found himself in wondrous astonishment at the sheer number of books that not only held their place on tables and shelves but scaled all three walls of the interior like brickwork. Brian walked off to the left side of the store, looking for nothing in particular. Quite frankly, he was not much of a reader, but escaping his life in Seoul meant disconnecting from his phone and so reading was his way of passing the time during train rides.

Wonpil trailed him, unperturbed by his aloof demeanor thus far. Something told him that Brian was not the stony man his lack of words suggested. “Are you looking for something?” Wonpil posed another question, unfazed by the absence of an answer to the previous one. He stood beside Brian who was intently scanning the spines of the books in front of them.

“No, not really,” Brian responded. “And I’m here on vacation. Well, really I’m just stopping over. I’m flying to London tomorrow morning.” It was the most amount of words he’d spoken ever since they met at the hotel and the ease with which he disclosed this information alarmed Brian himself.

“You seem to know the city well,” Wonpil took out a book from the shelf at random and read the blurb written on the back. _Anna Karenina._

Brian shrugged. “I know it enough.” He grabbed a copy of _Don Quixote_ and flipped through the pages absentmindedly. Wonpil looked at him intently, pretending that he was reading a few pages of the book in his hand, but in truth he was reading the man in front him, Brian Kang, clad in a brown coat, whose hair was cropped like his sentences, his gait as handsome as his features, he looked exactly as he had that fateful night at the _Piazza del Duomo_ , his eyes still bearing the twinkle of an emotion Wonpil could not put his finger on and it only made his interest in Brian blossom further. He once again replayed that moment of fortuity in his head when the man captured by his camera lens materialized in front of him like a magical spell, defying both space and time, and he felt his heart flutter so much that it caught him off-guard and he was suddenly aware that he was looking at Brian for far too long and that the other had noticed and looked at him as well.

“Are you getting that book?” Brian asked as if it to break the awkwardness created by their locking eyes. Wonpil immediately dropped his head and returned the book to the shelf before grabbing another one, his cheeks red with embarrassment at having realized that Brian had caught him staring. To the question, he merely shook his head and smiled and then it was Brian’s turn to look at the other. Wonpil was much shorter than he, he had a small leather bag slung over his shoulder, his eyes crinkled whenever he smiled and he was always smiling, and from the furtive glances Brian took as they walked to the bookstore moments ago, he noticed that he rubbed the back of his palm when he spoke. He still did not know why Wonpil had approached him and tagged along and if he had not asked it was only because it slipped his mind and only returned to his attention at that moment. And if he still kept the question to himself it was because he did not know how to word it so as not to come off impolite.

Instead he asked, “What kind of books do you read?” A harmless, practical question that befitted the setting.

“Books about love. But I guess you probably figured that out,” Wonpil answered with a slight smirk. The comment caught Brian off-guard.

“What do you mean?”

“I saw the look on your face when I talked about fate earlier,” Wonpil teased and a smile crept across Brian's face. “I’m not a romantic, though, if that’s what you thought.”

_And that was exactly what I thought,_ Brian said to himself. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it that way,” he said in defense but he knew that the other man was just humoring him. “I just… I wasn’t expecting that response.”

“Oh, and what response were you expecting, Mr. Kang?” Wonpil asked jokingly and Brian snapped his head at the mention of his last name, a gesture which clearly stunned him.

He fumbled for words for a moment and scratched the back of his ear. “I thought you were on vacation. You know, like most people.”

“And you’re on vacation, if I’m not mistaken?”

“… Of sorts.”

“Of sorts?” Wonpil repeated, and he recalled once again the photograph he took. _That was not the face of a man travelling, but of a man running away,_ Wonpil thought _._ “It’s quite a simple matter, isn’t it? Vacation, work trip, meeting someone… So which is it?”

Brian looked at Wonpil who, sure enough, had a smile on his face and he walked to other side of the bookstore to buy a few seconds to think of an answer, and Wonpil as if tied to the other man by an invisible thread that could not be broken, trailed behind him.

“Just needed some time off work,” Brian finally decided on a response but Wonpil was quick on the follow-up questions, giving the former little time to think of better, less personal answers.

“Do you live in Seoul?”

“Yes. And you?”

“Yeah, I’m from Seoul. What did you do there?” Wonpil asked, genuinely curious.

“I work… behind a desk,” was the vague yet technically not untrue answer that Brian gave but the pause mid-sentence indicated to Wonpil that it was not the whole truth.

Wonpil bit his lip and snatched another random book from the table beside him. He smiled mischievously as he pretended to read before reciting a long-winded conjecture that he drew up from Brian’s single answer. “Let me guess. If you don’t own the place you work, you hold a high-ranking position, and you’re successful – so successful your colleagues worship you and those who don’t, envy you. You live alone in a very posh apartment that overlooks the city and you go to parties every now and then where you rub elbows with politicians and movie stars and CEOs. And it’s not a terrible life but it isn’t the best either because all you do is go to work and go to parties and go home. You had just ended a relationship that was not good to begin with – they accused you of being too focused on your job and you were proud enough to deny it. But one day, the reality of things hit you and you realize you’re not really living life, in fact, it was wearing you down and all of a sudden you’re on plane to Europe.” When he ended his silly speech, Wonpil closed the book he was holding triumphantly and looked up to see Brian with a bewildered look on his face, jaw open and with an intense icy stare that revealed itself to actually be the look of a flustered man.

Wonpil realized that Brian’s silence meant only one thing: that there was a hint of truth to what he said, and it flustered him as much as it did Brian because everything he had said had been but a baseless story meant to break the ice. “No way… You’re not… Wait, what? Don’t tell me I was right about all that.” Wonpil chaffed. “You couldn’t possibly lead a miserable life.”

And to that comment, Brian couldn’t help burst into a fit of laughter and it confused Wonpil so much because it seemed out of his character. He pretended to wipe tears from his eyes as he said, “Maybe you’re right, maybe I do lead a miserable life.”

“Oh God. I didn’t mean it like that, I was just rambling. I never thought –” Wonpil quickly clarified but Brian cut him off by racing his index finger, a curious smile playing on his lips.

“You’re not right about the relationship part, though,” he said matter-of-factly as he returned a book to its place on the shelf. “But everything else, quite spot on.” He clicked his tongue.

Wonpil looked at him, still in disbelief that a story he devised on the spot would fit this stranger’s life so well. “So… do you own a company?”

“Yes.”

“And you’re rich.” He said it more as a statement than a question and Brian merely shrugged. “Do you hate your job? Or do you hate that it’s the only thing you ever do?”

Brian thought for a moment. “No. And no. It just became… too much.”

“And you needed a break?” Wonpil looked at him and for a split-second Brian’s eyes looked tired.

“Of sorts.” Brian’s favorite response. He sensed that the topic had begun to dip into waters that neither of them were prepared to dive into so he briskly redirected the topic to Wonpil. “And what do you do, Wonpil?”

Wonpil perked up at the mention of his name. “I take pictures. Now, I'm just going from one city to the next. Where the winds of fate take me.” He winked at Brian who chuckled and he could see that he looked more at ease now.

“So you’re a photographer.”

“An artist,” Wonpil quickly corrected him with a fierce look in his eyes. “I’m an artist. And art is my life’s pursuit,” he said, sounding deeply satisfied with his response as he would always be when asked the same question and giving the same answer. Everywhere he went, Wonpil always sought out art in whatever form – in paintings, literature, architecture, music, food, fashion – and he consumed them with a voraciousness that he described as the metaphorical appetite of the starving artist and he further immortalized them with his film camera.

Brian, amused by the dramatic flair in his voice and the conviction with which he answered, smiled endearingly. “An artist, right. What better city for an artist than Paris,” he said, thinking about _The Louvre,_ in particular.

“It’s been good to me,” Wonpil said, and he reached his hand to grab a book at the same exact moment that Brian decided to, and their fingers grazed each other’s ever so slightly that it caused them both to pull back.

“I’m sorry—”

“Did you mean to—”

“It’s okay.”

“It’s fine.”

They both paused and chuckled, then Wonpil grabbed the book that they had both reached for. It was _Romeo and Juliet_ by William Shakespeare, the namesake of the bookstore that had sheltered the two for what seemed like half an hour and bore witness to a connection between two strangers that was at the cusp of blossoming into an easy friendship. It was the same book that Wonpil kept in his bag and had spilled coffee on earlier.

“Have you read it?” Brian asked, referring to the book in Wonpil’s hand.

“Many times. I have a copy but I kinda ruined it with spilled coffee,” he took it out of his bag and handed it to Brian who flipped through the coffee-stained pages. It was a pitiful paperback, on the brink of falling apart so he was careful to keep all the pages intact. “It’s quite old and rough around the edges and there are creases everywhere you look, but that’s how you know it was loved,” Wonpil explained, placing the bookstore’s copy of _Romeo and Juliet_ back on the shelf. “Have you read it?”

“No, not really my type,” Brian answered and he handed the loved copy of _Romeo and Juliet_ back to its loving owner who promptly returned it inside his bag.

“Then what books do you read?” Wonpil walked over to the last wall of the bookstore that they had not yet stood in front of and Brian followed suit.

“I don’t really read that much. It’s… I get distracted easily,” he explained as he walked to where the other man stood.

“I hate to break it to you but this store might not be for you then,” Wonpil joked, scrunching his nose. Brian chuckled in response. “But name at least one book that you read and enjoyed, and maybe I’ll pick something out that you’d like.”

Brian nodded slowly and thought about all the books he had read, and there were many but not a lot. “ _Le Petit Prince,”_ he answered in his best French accent and it made Wonpil raise his eyebrows.

“ _It is only with the heart that one can see rightly,”_ Wonpil started quoting the book out loud.

“ _What is essential is invisible to the eye,”_ Brian finished with a solemn smile on his lips.

“What is essential is invisible to the eye,” Wonpil repeated once more, looking into Brian’s eyes and Wonpil found himself reading him once again like a book whose text was obscured by the stains of spilled coffee. But he turned his head away and scanned the shelves for something else. “I think I know what you'd like.” Wonpil’s eyes darted from one book to the next, in search of a particular title until it had occurred to him that it would be more practical to ask the owner instead, so he walked to counter with easy steps and Brian was left with the impression that this man, who resembled a friend more than a stranger now, already knew him so well in so little time, in part because Wonpil dared ask questions that other people would not and gave answers that only a purposeful person would, and he began to see what Wonpil meant when he said he was not a photographer, but an artist.

Brian walked over to the counter where Wonpil asked the French bookstore owner if they had a copy of _The Alchemist_ by Paul Coelho. To his dismay, they did not and Wonpil pouted his lips in disappointment. He turned to Brian who didn’t share his disappointment but was nonetheless amused by Wonpil’s reaction.

But his disappointment disappeared as soon as it had come and his eyes glimmered under the low orange light of the bookstore, smiling at Brian. “Are you hungry?”

Now that he had mentioned, Brian _was hungry._ “Yes, I am.”

“I know a wonderful place to eat dinner. But it’s a bit far from here,” Wonpil stated and he began to walk toward the exit. Brian followed him and the thread that connected them to each other grew stronger.

“How far?”

Wonpil squinted his eyes and hissed through gritted teeth. “About ten minutes if we ride.”

Brian turned the thought over in his head and decided that having dinner with Wonpil would not be so bad. “Okay, let’s get a cab.”

“Oh no,” Wonpil quickly interrupted. “I have a scooter. I left it parked in my hotel but it’s just a block away.” He pointed straight ahead and Brian once again thought that it would not be so bad if he had dinner with Wonpil and rode with him on his scooter.

“Alright, lead the way,” Brian told him, and all of a sudden he came to the realization that the “fate” which he loathed and scorned had interceded for him that afternoon.


End file.
